I’ve been thinking about hotel points recently and have been trying to decide what is the best card to put hotel spend on.

If we look at the major hotel players you have the following earn rates at their hotels with their respective top cards:

IHG: 10 pts/$1 spend, IHG Club Rewards Premier Chase Mastercard
Hilton: 14 pts/$1 spend, Hilton Aspire American Express
Marriott: 6 pts/$1 spend, Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant American Express
Hyatt: 4 pts/$1 spend, World of Hyatt Chase Visa
Wyndham: 8 pts/$1 spend, Wyndham Earner Business Barclays Visa
Choice: 5 pts/$1 spend, Choice Privileges Barclays Visa

If you were to buy points in any of these respective programs, the cheapest you can buy them is:

IHG: 100% bonus, $2500 for 500,000 points or $0.005/pt
Hilton: 100% bonus, $1600 for 320,000 points or $0.005/pt
Marriott: 60% bonus, $1875 for 240,000 points or $0.0078/pt
Hyatt: 40% bonus, $1320 for 77,000 points or $0.0171/pt
Wyndham: 40% bonus, $585 for 63,000 points or $0.0093/pt
Choice: 40% bonus, $1782 for 252,000 points or $0.0071/pt

So if we converted these to cash back rates on hotel spend, you get the following earn rates

IHG: 10 * $0.005 = 5% cash back
Hilton: 14 * $0.005 = 7% cash back
Marriott: 6* $0.0078 = 4.68% cash back
Hyatt: 4* $0.0171 = 6.84% cash back
Wyndham: 8 * $0.0093 = 7.44% cash back
Choice: 5 * $0.0071 = 3.55% cash back

What is the best cash back or pseudo cash back card to use at hotels to achieve these earn rates and then turn around to buy points with any program you want?

US Bank Altitude Reserve: 4.5% unlimited spend
BoA Customized Cash with Platinum Rewards and Travel category: 5.25% up to $2500/quarter
Citi Custom Cash + Rewards+: 5.55% up to $500/mo

Is there anything better? Is it possible to match these hotel earn rates with a cash back card? Are there even cheaper times to buy these points that I’ve missed?